Stepping Up
by noenigma
Summary: The last of the Standers' Stories...just a short character piece showing us Jack and Sam through their son's eyes.


Disclaimer: Purely for fan purposes; no copyright infringement intended.

 _One last attempt to fill in the pieces for those who kept asking for more…_

His favorite place on all the worlds was the Council Chambers on Eonal. He spent most council meetings under his father's table. By and between his father's legs, he fought the vile Ashen and Goa'uld with huge space rays. When the war became old and tiresome, he looked at the books his mother had tucked into a bag for him, ate the treats he gathered from the silent hands of Council Members while his father pretended not to notice, and colored on countless pieces of paper his father discreetly handed down to him when he tapped quietly on his dad's thigh. When sleep would start to overtake him, he would sing a quiet, sleepy-time song while tapping on his father's hollow legs until his dad would reach his long arms down and draw him up into his lap. There Chance Jacob would turn his face to his dad's chest and sleep to the sound of his heart beat and the murmurs of the councilors.

And, after he'd woken up and George had quietly ushered him out to the restroom, he'd scurry back under the table and start the fun all over again. No one ever seemed to mind a small boy attending almost all of the meetings of the Council of Worlds and only once could he remember ever being reprimanded more than a few quick taps on the head from his father's long fingers when his games grew too loud.

But that once had been enough. It was a changing point in his young, untroubled life. Like many such memories he never could bring into focus just what he had done to bring down George's wrath upon his head, but the ignominy of being dragged from his place under the table and through the chambers never left him. He could forever after hear the voice of Councilman Hetret pausing only a second from the surprise of it and then droning on; and the silence of his father. The memory of that silence was enough to make him fear George had been acting on his father's orders when he hauled him out of the Council Chambers.

He could remember the hot, angry tears which had run down his face after he'd received his punishment and been roughly thunked onto the bench right under the picture of the Asgard ships coming to save his father after Hakter. Maybe that was what had made such an impact on the little boy he had been. Whatever it was, when George huffed under his breath at the cowering child before him, "Your father is a great man and you won't be shaming him in this way!" his words forever changed Chance's view of not only his father but of himself as well.

The truth of those words filtered down into the little boy's mind and for the first time he understood that his father was unlike other fathers. His father Stood and Standers on all the Worlds came to their feet, his father passed by and men and women acknowledged him with a salute, his father called and even the Asgard came. This new knowledge took him by surprise. The man who sprawled on the bed beside him every night and tickled him until he couldn't breathe, the man who snuck the yucky gralves off his plate when his mother wasn't looking, the man who held him on his lap and spun around and around until they were both too dizzy to hold their heads up wasn't just his daddy. When George was going on about how he was big enough not to leave such a mess, the man who winked at him was more than just his father. He was a great man.

He didn't understand what all that meant, but he instinctively knew that a great man deserved a good son, not a naughty, noisy boy like Chance Jacob. His tears of outrage and anger over George's ill-treatment turned to those of sorrow before a thoroughly subdued little boy had been quietly returned to the Council Chambers. Somberly, he climbed into his father's lap and with his dad's fingers playing in his hair and the voices of Councilors discussing the plague on Craiike in his ears, he'd done his best to sleep away the shame of the day.

But, it was still there when he awoke to find his dad shaking hands with the last of the Council Members heading off towards home. The meeting was over, and it was time for them to leave as well. He quietly helped George gather up his papers and books and toys and didn't even fuss about it. Too discouraged to run about as he usually did and play among the statues that lined the path along their way, he climbed into his father's lap for the ride home.

As they passed the monuments, he looked at each one. He knew them all, knew each planet, each part they'd played in the War. Stander after Stander had carried him along that path during Council breaks while his father met with tight-lipped men behind closed doors. They'd showed him each image, read to him each inscription, and in quiet voices thick with unshed tears they'd spoken to him of the part they'd played in the war. They talked about the things they'd left behind to join the fight or the things they'd sacrificed to the cause while forced to wait at home. They spoke of the wounds they'd received and the loved ones they'd lost. None of them had meant for him to understand or even cared if he listened...he was only a little boy, almost still a baby when he'd first started coming.

And he didn't understand it all...didn't know why they'd needed his daddy to teach them how to Stand or why they'd taken his daddy's real flesh and blood legs to do so. But, with his new-found knowledge, he did understand enough to know they had needed a great man to fight their war. And that great man had been his father.

Before that day, going through the Gate had never failed to delight him. He'd always loved the kawoosh of the Gate and passing into its blue ripples from the hot brownness of Eonal to the cool green of home. He liked to position his body into some strange stance as they moved into the Gate and watch it emerge exactly the same way on the other side. But, today the wonder of the Gate meant nothing to him.

He also usually liked watching the salutes of those they met, listening to their respectful voices as his father paused along the way to speak to them, and noticing the way they drew close to hear his words. But, not today. Today he could see in their faces and hear in their voices that his father was a great man. And he was afraid of what that meant.

He always looked forward to meeting his mom. They never knew when they'd meet her. Sometimes she was waiting at the Gate for them, other times she'd meet them along the way somewhere or another, and sometimes they'd have to go all the way to her classroom or lab and wait quietly as she finished her work. His little brother Chase might be in her arms or toddling at her feet or off somewhere with one Stander or another. Chance Jacob didn't care; one way or another meeting her was his favorite time of the whole day.

He loved that first moment of seeing her, of hearing the catch in his father's breath when he saw her and feeling it matched by his own. He loved the look of joy she got in her eyes when she caught sight of them, and he loved the way it transformed itself into a welcoming smile. He loved the feel of her sweeping him up into her arms and her familiar hands running up and down his back as though to assure herself he was really there. He loved the soft kiss she'd give the top of his head and then his forehead when he raised his smiling face to hers.

And he loved how she always understood how his day had gone. "A good day then" or "A rough one" she'd say and she was always right. In the way of a little boy, he thought she read it through her hands on the back of his head as she smoothed his hair. It would be years before he understood differently. Understood, in fact, that though it was the child she held, it was to the man she spoke. It was his father's day she asked after, and by then he understood the signs she'd read had not been the thoughts of her son, but the tenseness of her husband's muscles, the grimness of his smile, whether sweat plastered his hair to his head, or whether, when his son clambered out of his lap into her arms, his hand moved to roughly rub his thigh.

The chastened little boy in his father's lap that day knew none of that. He just wanted to be in his mother's arms far away from the place of his disgrace. And it seemed they'd never get there. They'd already come through the Gate and were almost all the way to the Institute and still they hadn't seen her. He blinked to keep his sadness from leaking out of him in hot tears, but it didn't help. He roughly swiped his arm over his eyes to wipe them away, but his father had already seen them.

"What's the matter, CJ?" the great man asked him. Chance Jacob was almost fearful looking up into his face, but it hadn't changed. It was still the face of his father. His little boy mind couldn't grasp the familiarity of his father's face and the new knowledge he'd gained of him that day. Laugh lines and worry lines still intertwined in and around one another as they etched their way across it. Like always, his eyes looked at him and through him and, Chance was sure, saw everything about him while holding hidden within their depths thoughts Chance could never guess. Chance knew if he reached up his hand the gray stubble on his dad's chin would tickle him just like always. But things weren't like always.

"What's troubling you, Son?" his father asked again and Chance couldn't tell him.

Instead he said, "What makes you a great man, Daddy?" His father blinked at him in surprise and then looked up the path. Chance felt the familiar intake of air and saw his father's eyes widen and a smile break out across his face and knew his mother was coming. But seeing her was no longer the most important thing in Chance's mind. He needed an answer. "I want to know, Sir, what makes you a great man?" he demanded.

"I guess that," his father said with a nod of his head, and Chance Jacob followed it in time to see the smile light his mother's face. He puckered his face at the answer and tried to work it out.

Then she was beside them, settling Chase into his father's lap, and pulling him up into a tight hug. The baby who they were going to get 'soon' wiggled underneath him. Usually he would have gently nudged it hello with his knee, but today he didn't even notice it as his mother's hands ran their welcome up and down his back and wiped away the fear and shame he'd held all afternoon.

If her smile and what lay beneath it made his father great, then he was going to be all right. Because that smile was as much his as his dad's. If it made Jack O'Neill a great man, it would do the same for his son.

He raised his face to receive her kiss and wondered when he'd become a great man, when he'd have to give up his flesh and blood legs for hollow ones like his dad's, when he'd have to quit playing under the table and sit in one of the big chairs instead, when his voice would speak in the Council Chambers and other men would be quiet and listen to what he had to say, when he'd Stand and others would Stand with him. But, he wasn't afraid of it anymore.

He would be almost grown before he realized his father had simply given him an answer to avoid having to really look at a question that made him uncomfortable. His father hadn't wanted to admit to his son that he didn't see himself as a great man. He'd thrown him a bone to shut him up and hadn't considered that Chance would take it to heart. By then, the damage, if it was damage, was already done. He'd been set on the path to become a man who would be his father's son.

His new understanding had not changed anything. He'd swallowed down his irritation at his father's tendency to avoid the relevant, joined the battle over Eonal, and earned his place on a new monument to be erected on its desolate soil.


End file.
